Hey all - hope you are doing well today!

I'm often asked what I read to keep up with my faith, religion, etc.  So I thought I would list the top web sites that I frequent.  I'm not getting paid to promote these sites; I'm hoping that posting these will help you become better educated and  informed about your faith, religion, church, etc.

www.christianitytoday.com
www.christianpost.com

www.huffingtonpost.com/religion
www.sojo.net
www.conversantlife.com
www.outreach.com

Each of these sites has it's own flavor - some more "conservative", some more "liberal" - all have been helpful for me.

What sites are helpful for you? List them in the comment section!

I follow a lot of blogs on ministry, church, theology, etc.  One that I follow is by a guy named Ron Edmondson (http://www.ronedmondson.com/).  He has a lot of advice for pastors and church members alike.  He recently wrote an article on how Christians should behave online.  Here are his main points:

The week in between Christmas and New Year allows me time for a little celebration and a lot of reflection.  God reminds the Israelites many times in the Old Testament to not forget His commandments and to remember His mighty works - it will give them courage to have faith in Him.  So each year I try to remember what God has done so that I (we) can remember His faithfulness and be excited about what He will do in the new year.  

Here are some numbers from 2013 that are of some interest:
Baptisms - 10 (up from 2012)
New Members  - 7 (down from 2012)
Attendance - 8% increase 
                                                                             Giving - Giving maintained 2012 levels
                                                                              
Now there are a lot of aspects of church life that can't be quantified by numbers


Here is a summary rundown of the teachings we have done this year.  It's a great mixture of subjects that taught us all a lot about God and how to live our lives as Christians.

January - The Great Give: Learning How to Give our Best to God
February/March - Why Did God Put me Here?
April - Stories of God that STIR Your Heart to Action
May - Jonah
June - Celebration: How The Greats Celebrated God
July/August - Small Faith: Great God
September - Revolution: The  Saga of Acts
October - Getting Past Your Past
November - Stories of the Master
December  - Turning Christmas Upside Down

Along with our Sunday teachings God blessed us with a lot of opportunities for spiritual growth:

- Seminar: Hell and Purgatory
- Small group studies
- Kidzone ministry for the development of our young kids.
- Identity ministry for the development of our Jr. and Sr. High students
- Sunday morning teachings: Old Testament Challenge, Ordinary Day with Jesus, Jesus 101

Spirirtual growth was coupled with a lot of fellowship and community time this year:

- Annual church picnic
- BRCC day at Cedarland
- Spring Fling at Skateland
- Men's breakfast
- Various pizza Sundays

This was also a special year as we celebrated the church's 25th anniversary.  We celebrated with a special service with a lot of special guests and a lesson on the legacy of our spiritual community.
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Overall the year 2013 was great, as can be seen above from all the time we spent together both in community and in discipleship.  2014 will be a pivotal year in the life of the church.  One of the things we will set out to do is to refocus and recast the vision of the church.  As an organism, it is key that we are all on the same page in terms of priorities and goals.  The elders and ministry leaders will be working closely on fleshing out God's vision for our church  and finding a place for each and every person to participate in the vision of the church - we all have a role in the Kingdom of God!  The two areas that are essential for each one of us in the new year are discipleship and evangelism.  We each need to be growing in and proclaiming Christ to our neighbors and friends.

Be ready for greater things in your community for 2014!

In addition to some of my ministry and personal posts, I'm going to be starting a "A la carte" post; hopefully doing them three times a week.  These posts will be dedicated to bringing to you some of the ministry and spiritual (sometimes academic) resources that I am using or have discovered.  I'm hoping this will help my readers in their ministry or personal life.  If you have requests as to what you would want to see here, just leave a comment here or contact me using twitter, email, or facebook - links are on  my home page.  

Here is a couple for today - 

I've read a lot of leadership stuff over the years, both church and business leadership stuff: Harvard Business Review, John Maxwell, Rick Warren - you name it, I've read it.  The truth is that I have read so much stuff that I have forgotten more than I have remembered.  There is one thing that has stuck with me over the past 15 years of ministry - be intentional in everything that you do; what you are intentional about will happen, what you hope will happen will not.

My thoughts about the church have been revolving around this idea.  At BRCC we spend time talking about the vision of reaching and growing people and "buying into the vision of the church."  We even have the vision statement of the church right on the wall of our stairwell leading up to the sanctuary.  The vision of the church is important because it determines the direction of the church.  It eliminates thing that you shouldn't do while helping you decide what you should do.  Just because a person or organization has a vision, that doesn't mean it automatically happens; one must set GOALS that help that vision to come to fruition

The reality is that we have not done a great job at BrookRidge in the past few years at setting goals within our vision.  We have allowed our church community to  kind of waver about in our events and our decisions.  There have been a lot of great things that we have done in the past few years.  We have really focused on fellowship and building relationship in our community.  We have seen our small group ministry grow as a result of this great fellowship.  We have had some great outreach events, like our Christmas and Easter outreach.  When we made the decision to go to one service the purpose was to create more and better fellowship and build momentum for great worship each Sunday.  I think we are well on our way (in 10 months) to accomplishing this.

Here is what we are not doing well - hard core reaching out to the community in a strategic way.  I have felt that our love for those in the community and those who have yet to feel the love of Jesus waver.  I'm afraid we might have replaced our desire to reach others with our desire to build internal community; to build community is great, but it needs to be done in partnership with evangelism - sharing Jesus in our own lives and through church community events.  As pastor I want us to have a equal emphasis on evangelism as we do on building community; right now I think we are a little off.